God's Holiness

The story of Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5.1-11 (they lied to the church and to God about the amount of money they got for the land they sold and were punished by death).

Mohler:

This story reminds us that God is infinitely holy and must be worshiped as holy. Too often, modern Christians have no sense of the holiness of God. Indeed, one of the biggest problems with modern Christianity is that we have lost our sense of God’s limitless perfection and moral purity. Correspondingly, we have also lost our sense of the gravity of our sin. As R.C. Sproul explains in his classic work The Holiness of God: 

When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God’s wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God’s nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace.

 (The Holiness of God, page 183) 

As Sproul goes on to explain, our sin is not some minor peccadillo or small mistake. Instead, “every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.” Human nature balks at the story of Ananias and Sapphira because we think one little lie is not deserving of God’s wrath and the execution of capital punishment. But this shows how little we understand God’s holiness and our own sinfulness. Sin is an assault on God’s very character. The fact that God did not cast all of humanity into ruin when Adam and Eve first rebelled against him is a sign of his long-suffering and his amazing grace, and not a sign that sin is not really that big a deal. The true marvel in this passage is not so much that God killed Ananias and Sapphira, but that God has not executed justice on all of us, and that instead his Son came to die so that there might be a church community that enjoyed his Father’s favor and salvation. In this light, the grace of the gospel found in Christ Jesus shines with the utmost radiance and glory.

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Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
5.11

We must respond to God’s holiness in the way that the early church did. The early church “feared” when they heard the report of what had happened to Ananias and Sapphira. Because of the grace of God found in Christ, our relationship with God is no longer one of a guilty offender before the Judge. Nor is God some cruel tyrant who is out to get us. God is a Father: a loving Father who pursues the good of his children. But that does not mean we should not also fear God. We should. We should stand in awe and wonder at his holiness. We should fear his power and his might. We should fear him as our Creator, who holds his very breath in our hand. He is our Father, yes, but he is also our awesome Lord. Knowing him as the former does not negate responding appropriately to him as the latter: “If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear,” the apostle Peter would write to the churches of modern-day Turkey years after he had witnessed the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira (1 Peter 1:17). This fear gives birth not to timidity and uncertainty in our relationship with God, but to reverence and wonder.